After net neutrality, will we need “Google neutrality?”

A leading US academic on network economics argues that net neutrality is a …

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has mounted a recent push to turn network neutrality "principles" into official regulations—and in doing so has stirred up the net neutrality hornet's nest once again. The issues involved are thorny when you wade deep into the weeds, but consumer-level support for network neutrality seems largely driven by simple principle: AT&T should not be "speeding up" websites with deep pockets, leaving everyone else to languish in the slow lane.

This was famously what AT&T Chairman Ed Whitacre wanted to do back in 2005 when he declared that Internet companies would not be able to "use my pipes free." The scheme that he envisioned was a basic bit of price discrimination; charge extra fees to those who could afford to pay in order to maximize profits.

But here's the thing—price discrimination happens all the time (US college fees vary widely based on one's ability to pay, for instance). And while ISPs are one obvious chokepoint on the Internet, they aren't the only one. Massive search engines like Google can easily become another, and it might not be long before the government needs to think about other forms of "neutrality."

"Should something like net neutrality prevail, the conflict would likely move to a different level," writes one of the leading US academics on Internet growth and economics. "That level might become search neutrality."

Or, as cloud computing takes off, one company (again, this might well be Google) could so completely dominate the market that it becomes another choke point. We might then need to consider "cloud neutrality."

Odlyzko's paper (PDF) comes from a special issue of the Review of Network Economics earlier this year which was devoted to the topic of network neutrality. Odlyzko himself is an internationally recognized expert on network economics who is based at the University of Minnesota and repeatedly puts the kibosh on the idea that networks are about to drown beneath some "exaflood" of data, or that network upgrades are truly expensive.

The special journal issue was put together by Phil Weiser, a tech law veteran who now has a senior job in the Obama Department of Justice, and who has involved himself in recent FCC panels related to the national broadband plan. Point being: these ideas are being circulated by influential thought leaders and being read by those in a position to act on them.

Discrimination and profits

Odlyzko begins by noting that "from the standard economic point of view, there is nothing nefarious about attempting to introduce differential charging." The dream of most businesses is not to set a single price on an item, but to charge each customer the maximum amount that they are willing and able to pay.

This sort of information can be gleaned from all sorts of clues, but can cause extremely negative reactions when customers figure it out. Imagine learning that Amazon was showing you a different price on all items than it showed to your neighbor because the company knows your purchase history and buying practices so well. Actually, you don't have to imagine—something like this happened in 2000 and spawned national headlines and a big backlash.

Fortunately for those who hate the idea, it's often stunningly difficult to implement effectively. As the paper notes, "Starbucks will not suddenly declare that the price of a cup of coffee will be $2, $5, or $7, depending on how much Starbucks thinks a particular individual might be able and willing to pay, based on that person's history of Starbucks purchases as well as income and assets, with a 'standard list price' of $10 per cup for those who insist on remaining anonymous."

The profit potential of such a role is gigantic.

But this sounds exactly like the dream of those into "behavioral targeting," especially the sorts of targeting that rely on tracking Internet users as they browse the Web. Knowing how often and when users visit particular types of pages can tell marketers all sorts of things; someone who regularly visits a high-end jewelry site probably has more money than a Craigslist devotee.

What company is poised to own behavioral targeting? Google. Any company that becomes the go-to source for consumer information and that controls the delivery of special offers, coupons, and discount advertisements "could potentially end up in control of product pricing, essentially relegating the good and service providers to a commodity role. The profit potential of such a role is gigantic."

In order to make this practice truly lucrative, though, a company like Google would need to have a neutral network connecting it to consumers. Otherwise, as Google grows in power and popularity, "the communications network could grab profits by charging differential fees to Google that would absorb most of the benefits."

Is "Google neutrality" next?

Odlyzko's view is that too much attention is paid to the ISPs; the issue of differential pricing could well show up at many points of the Internet stack, along with similar consumer worries. "The basic conclusion," he writes, "is that whether AT&T or Google wins the net neutrality battle, the outcome... may be similar, namely society exposed to the prospect of an unprecedented degree of discrimination. It is doubtful that competition could mitigate the risks."

The real question for deciding these issues isn't economic—it's based instead on public discomfort with particular practices. For instance, differential pricing is often applied to situations where a company can somehow determine when a product is valuable to consumers. In the European mobile telephone market, making an international call is a good proxy for "importance" of that call. Thus, despite the presence of robust competition, international roaming fees in Europe remain scandalously high. The situation so outraged the public that the European Commission moved in 2007 simply to mandate that the telephone companies lower their fees.

In Odlyzko's words, the tremendous fees "offended the public sense of fairness"—a tremendous business "no-no," as the recent furor over bank bailouts and Wall Street reminds us. Once the public was offended, the public (through its representatives) altered the rules of the marketplace.

Right now, the US public is offended about the idea of Internet price discrimination against content websites. The issue raises concerns about democratic speech on the Internet (which has proven to be a tremendous publishing platform for those who could never afford one before) along with concerns about innovation (how can the next Google get started in a garage when the network favors the deeply pocketed?); if those concerns win out, price discrimination of a certain sort might well be outlawed for ISPs, even as we allow it in all sorts of other social spaces.

And that inconsistency isn't necessarily bad; it's simply a reflection of a social sense of "fairness" written into regulation. Odlyzko himself favors net neutrality—he just wants to make sure that people don't get so starry-eyed about the virtues of regulating ISPs that they forget the same arguments might soon apply to other Internet choke points like cloud operators and search engines.

The paper concludes with a clarion call to government watchfulness: "For telecommunications, given current trends in demand and in rate and sources of innovation, it appears to be better for society not to tilt towards the operators, and instead stimulate innovation on the network by others by enforcing net neutrality. But this would likely open the way for other players, such as Google, then emerge from that open and competitive arena as big winners, to become choke points. So it would be wise to prepare to monitor what happens, and be ready to intervene by imposing neutrality rules on them when necessary."

The college example as a form of price discrimination is a bit misleading. The most extreme examples of price discrimination largely occur in state schools in cases of students with almost no ability to pay for college (like myself). My school still gets paid full in-state tuition for having me as a student.

But a large portion of that is funded by government grants that are need based. This isn't really price discrimination, but an investment by the state/federal governments that paying for much of my education now will pay off in the future by increasing my economic productivity. In my case individually, this is a huge risk. That risk is lessoned just like any risk by spreading it around in a large pool of students.

Even students who do pay lower tuition without government assistance are often funded by private or university funds dedicated to scholarships and grants. In these cases, it's a simliar investment. They're either investing in public relations by educating low-income citizens, or chancing that that student will become successful and provide returns in the form of notoriety, exposure, or long-term donations as alumni.

In both cases, the University still gets the same amount per student. It just sometimes comes from interior and exterior sources, not the students themselves.

It's not only a question of economics. It's also about access to information and ideas.

What if Google started filtering certain sites out of its search results, not because of profit motive but, say, according to a political agenda, religious bias or moral rules? The same can be accomplished by changing the order of results.

This would be insidious because it would be practically invisible. Generally, you'd never know something was filtered unless you didn't need Google to find it.

I would support at least a law forcing disclosure of any filtering or other manipulation of search results.

Edit: It occurs to me now, if there were a search neutrality law, how would the regulators know whether search engines were following it? They would have to look at the famous secret Gooogle algorithm.

But the only reason Google got to where it is, is in large due to the ideas of "network neutrality". Sure maybe Google is getting too big for its britches, but network neutrality levels the playing field for another company to get a jump start like they did.

Originally posted by fowl:I was thinking, what if Google started charging ISP's to carry "it's content".

What are they going to do? __not__ carry Google? Would you subscribe to slightly cheaper internet that didn't have youtube?

Case in point: ESPN360. I believe most of the major ISPs now "subscribe" to this service and pay a fee to ESPN, but not even a few months ago, Comcast did not..and many of their subscribers were up in arms about not being able to access this feature on their computer.

It will be interesting to see how this affects future services similar to these.

The ISP case is hardly a standard example of price discrimination, because the operators of web sites are not the ISPs customers. In fact, ISPs already partake in price discrimination against their actual customers (i.e., you and me) when they charge different amounts for different speeds of service. What the ISPs want to do is make both sides pay, even though it is the web sites that provide the entire value for their service; what good is an internet connection if one has nothing to connect to?

It's also disingenuous to compare ISPs to google. It's true that google has an enormous portion of the internet search pie, but there's not reason why everybody couldn't start using bing tomorrow if it provided a better service. ISPs, meanwhile, have natural monopolies (or duopolies) and it is very difficult and expensive for any other competitor to arise, given the massive infrastructure costs and the silliness of running more than one cable to each home.

The scary thing about [the potential lack of] search neutrality is the pervasiveness of the GOOG search engine: it's the default in most major browsers (IE, FF, Opera, Chrome of course); and unless one goes to great effort to install a plug-in (e.g. Glims), it is the ONLY search engine available in Safari... That is, unless one jumps to a search engine URL before performing a search. If GOOG decides to (or has already decided to?) filter search results for monetized purposes...who knows the better? Many of my search results are quite littered with commercial interests.

I think a fascinating point has been raised. People are getting all worked up that web service providers (like Google) cannot be "charged extra" to "work better".

For many people, Google is the portal to the Internet. They use it to find other websites. Google happily "charges extra" to websites that want to "work better" (i.e. appear favorably when a search is performed).

Which is the same as a beer company being paying for advertising to reach more eyeballs, of course. Almost all agree that advertising is acceptable.

This is why my personal view is to support Net Neutrality in terms of making it illegal to intentionally "cripple" a service (be it an ISP blocking/slowing VoIP or YouTube, or a search provider like Google blocking results related to Bing, etc).

But I don't want to get in the way of companies (or individuals) "paying extra" to have preferential service. I don't believe that a giant like Google would end up being forced to do so -- public reaction would cripple any ISP that cannot deliver a pleasant Google experience.

If some new company (say a high-performance video conferencing service) wants to pay ISPs to prioritize data, I don't see a fundamental problem with them doing so, versus paying to have more points of presence globally, or paying to develop a better compression algorithm, or paying for advertising, or paying users outright to use their service, etc, etc.

Additionally, aside from the "unintended consequences" of any regulation, I feel that "Net Neutrality" would be hard to pin down. Make it illegal to prioritize a websites traffic? What if that website instead were to pay for "virtual leased lines" to many "virtual points of presence" that then bypassed many Internet choke points? What if that website paid for more bandwidth (which of course many do) and then paid for "less oversubscription" between them and the core? Etc, etc.

I can see heavy-handed Net Neutrality regulation resulting in a huge sums of money going to lawyers who will spend years or decades arguing such cases. In fact, that seems more likely (to me) than the potential issues of allowing prioritization (such as the concern that 80% of traffic will end up being "prioritized" leaving the small players non-functional).

I can see heavy-handed Net Neutrality regulation resulting in a huge sums of money going to lawyers who will spend years or decades arguing such cases. In fact, that seems more likely (to me) than the potential issues of allowing prioritization (such as the concern that 80% of traffic will end up being "prioritized" leaving the small players non-functional).

This doesn't make sense. It's completely contradictory, because net neutrality would forbid any one company from having prioritized access. Paying for subscribing to Internet backbones is currently what Google does (they essentially became their own ISP) is entirely legal, because that simply increases the bandwidth for the company to serve its customers. What should NOT be legal is charging customers for that internet access and preventing certain companies to have the same speeds as other companies who have paid more. That's the scenario that net neutrality is designed to prevent; the ISP double-dipping, while theoretically using those funds to increase the capacity of their network. But in reality, we all know what they'd rather do with that money: pocket it and give it out as a profit sheet for stockholders.

So in essence, there wouldn't be any lawsuits over net neutrality if it became law, because it would be illegal to discriminate against ANY kind of traffic. Now, throttling on a heavy bandwidth user might have implications, but that's not net neutrality, since net neutrality only covers the aspect that the Internet isn't supposed to be discriminating for certain types of traffic, not the general speed. No one said it's wrong to charge a user higher fees for a higher speed connection, only that limiting that user or business from getting what its connection should be capable of is wrong.

Netchipguy, Congrats, that is the most reasonable defense of non-neutrality I've seen. Seriously.

There are several problems tho.

1. "prioritize A but don't hinder B" is nonsense in terms of network technology. Prioritizing one set of packets is the same thing as dropping others in case of conflict - only the words are different.

2. The problem with non-neutrality is that once it's allowed, we have to assume the worst will happen, and that's much worse than prioritization. ISPs could block websites of their choice, charge different rates according to which protocol the subscriber uses on the network, block entire protocols, charge extra for not blocking encrypted traffic, secretly rewrite your emails and web pages, forge packets in other ways, and generally be the lords of what anyone ever gets to connect to.

So, do you think that's exaggerated, and the ISPs would not be so evil? Well, if they assure us the won't do those things, then they have no reason for objecting to prohibition of those things. If they object to the prohibition, it can only be because they want to engage in the behavior.

3. Granted, Congress can be counted on to make bad laws even on the rare occasions when the intention is good. However, there is no reason in principle that a NN law could not be clear and definite, avoiding the need for a lot of court cases.

4. Whether all of this applies to Google or other search engines is another question. The internet is the last bastion of free speech, so it seems to me any one content provider would have to take a very utility-like role to be rightly subjected to any sort of content rules.

IMO, one "mistake" most people make is to assume that we live in a free market economy whenever that seems to suit one's position. We don't. We do not let market forces decide everything. However, we are lazy. We do not regulate everything just because the prices are unjustified. For example, the per text message charge is twenty cents domestic. There is no way anyone could justify that. However, we do not act because we take the path of least resistance.

saying that we do not need to carry out with the task at hand (net neutrality) because there might be next issues soon is just like saying we should not treat under five year old children who are dying of easily curable diarrhea because they would probably get cardiac diseases when they are eighty nine.

We will deal with Google neutrality when we get there. Please repeat after me: Google is not the Anti-Christ. Please do not throw red herrings to prevent network neutrality.

In fact, ISPs already partake in price discrimination against their actual customers (i.e., you and me) when they charge different amounts for different speeds of service.

Why are most of the instances of alleged "price discrimination" in this thread and in the article not actually price discrimination? Price discrimination is charging different prices for the same thing based on who the buyer is. Charging more for a higher tier of service isn't price discrimination because you're paying more to get more.

As to needing to regulate Google... I'm not seeing it. It sounds like more astroturf. This is the company that set up a website to help you remove your data from their services. They have dozens of serious competitors in all of their core markets. They're only popular because their customers like them. Their market share exists only because their customers understand they don't do the Microsoft-like things that require regulatory intervention. If it came out that they were doing something nefarious then they would lose all their customers in a heartbeat.

Put another way, we're demanding network neutrality because AT&T loudly threatened to violate it and Comcast already does. Come back when you have some nontrivial evidence of Google doing something similar.

What it really boils down to is enforcing and strengthening anti-trust. We let cable, cell-telco-dsl consolidate too much. Now we either have to break them up into tiny little pieces which will never happen or we need to regulate them.

There are a lot of search engines out there and if people think they get bad results from google then they are free to use the many other options out there including some seriously well funded ones. This whole google line is a red herring being thrown into the argument by astroturf industry groups and pseudo academic whores.

The difference between the search biz or the cloud biz is that there are huge barriers to entry to become an ISP. You have to negotiate with local governments who will be heavily lobbied by the incumbents to block you. You need massive amounts of money to invest in duplicate infrastructure that the incumbents built out over a century and much of it was taxpayer subsidized. Assuming you get permission, you then have to spend years digging up the ground or successfully outbid incumbents for available spectrum.

All I need to create a search engine is a good algorithm, some servers, and a little clever marketing. If people like my results better, google and microsoft will have to compete on quality and user experience.

Cable/Telco do not compete on price, quality, user experience, or really anything else. They are not even required to advertise the true prices.

Originally posted by swhx7:What if Google started filtering certain sites out of its search results, not because of profit motive but, say, according to a political agenda, religious bias or moral rules? The same can be accomplished by changing the order of results.

This would be insidious because it would be practically invisible. Generally, you'd never know something was filtered unless you didn't need Google to find it.

I hope you aren't suggesting the government can force Google to carry specific types of speech....

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I would support at least a law forcing disclosure of any filtering or other manipulation of search results.

At least that would be within the realm of consumer protection and not regulating speech

Originally posted by swhx7:1. "prioritize A but don't hinder B" is nonsense in terms of network technology. Prioritizing one set of packets is the same thing as dropping others in case of conflict - only the words are different.

Then set regulations requiring each QOS level to perform at a specific rate. Kind of like MPG and the auto industry. Tell the ISPs that each QOS level has to have a specific performance. It's easy to monitor, so watchdogs can setup simple servers and software on volunteer's computers to make sure the requirements are met.

On the other side, companies buying the right for certain apps to run at a higher QOS can monitor it as well on their end to make sure they're getting their money's worth.

Between the two, maybe even the government getting involved to setup servers at pinch points on the core layer, we should be pretty well covered to make sure ISPs are following the rules.

Don't let a helpful technology get buried.

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2. The problem with non-neutrality is that once it's allowed, we have to assume the worst will happen, and that's much worse than prioritization. ISPs could block websites of their choice, charge different rates according to which protocol the subscriber uses on the network, block entire protocols, charge extra for not blocking encrypted traffic, secretly rewrite your emails and web pages, forge packets in other ways, and generally be the lords of what anyone ever gets to connect to.

Sixty percent of the principles of Net-Neutrality, mostly concerning conflict of interest of the ISP against competing web services, are great. No one will argue against these points and most of them were recently enacted into FCC policy. Those pushing NN the hardest are doing so to stop QOS and bandwidth throttling by application. Why can't we take NN as far as we have and then heavily regulate the WOS and throttling? Again, we can monitor, why ban it outright?

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So, do you think that's exaggerated, and the ISPs would not be so evil? Well, if they assure us the won't do those things, then they have no reason for objecting to prohibition of those things. If they object to the prohibition, it can only be because they want to engage in the behavior.

They object to NN because of tiny pieces of what's proposed. AT&T even agreed to most provisions of NN several years ago, but no ISP wants the QOS and throttling abilities limited.

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3. Granted, Congress can be counted on to make bad laws even on the rare occasions when the intention is good. However, there is no reason in principle that a NN law could not be clear and definite, avoiding the need for a lot of court cases.

Eh? A law that's clear and defined? You're expecting a miracle?

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4. Whether all of this applies to Google or other search engines is another question. The internet is the last bastion of free speech, so it seems to me any one content provider would have to take a very utility-like role to be rightly subjected to any sort of content rules.

LAST BASTION!? Are you serious? Taking things a little too far.

Anyway, on your "utility-like role", that is another important issue. Since some content companies, like Google, have built their own networks on dark fiber, will they be required to follow the NN rules or do they only apply to consumer ISPs? Google and the like have peering agreements, allowing traffic through their network that's not necessarily destined for Google servers. Is Google allowed to give their traffic priority over others?

Originally posted by Montana:As to needing to regulate Google... I'm not seeing it. It sounds like more astroturf. This is the company that set up a website to help you remove your data from their services. They have dozens of serious competitors in all of their core markets. They're only popular because their customers like them. Their market share exists only because their customers understand they don't do the Microsoft-like things that require regulatory intervention. If it came out that they were doing something nefarious then they would lose all their customers in a heartbeat.

That site is for importing and exporting data, not removing it. No where on that site does it talk about how to "remove your data". Secondly, there are no guarantees your data has been removed nor no legal requirement for Google to remove it if you did ask. You offered it to them by using their services and their Privacy policy clearly states they can use that data for any of their services, which includes AdSense.

As far as web searches, they say they make all data anonymous but how? Most data can be traced backwards, like we learned with AOL three years ago.

Originally posted by wyldeone:It's also disingenuous to compare ISPs to google. It's true that google has an enormous portion of the internet search pie, but there's not reason why everybody couldn't start using bing tomorrow if it provided a better service. ISPs, meanwhile, have natural monopolies (or duopolies) and it is very difficult and expensive for any other competitor to arise, given the massive infrastructure costs and the silliness of running more than one cable to each home.

Only Google PR people use these lame arguments. AstroTurfing anyone?

I guess this whole search neutrality thing is getting Google's attention, as it should. The hypocrisy of the position that Google is about to be forced to adopt should be plain for all to see.

Originally posted by Montana:As to needing to regulate Google... I'm not seeing it. It sounds like more astroturf. This is the company that set up a website to help you remove your data from their services. They have dozens of serious competitors in all of their core markets. They're only popular because their customers like them. Their market share exists only because their customers understand they don't do the Microsoft-like things that require regulatory intervention. If it came out that they were doing something nefarious then they would lose all their customers in a heartbeat.

That site is for importing and exporting data, not removing it. No where on that site does it talk about how to "remove your data". Secondly, there are no guarantees your data has been removed nor no legal requirement for Google to remove it if you did ask. You offered it to them by using their services and their Privacy policy clearly states they can use that data for any of their services, which includes AdSense.

You completely missed the point. We're not talking about privacy here. Allowing users to export their data means they can switch to another service. That's what we're talking about here.

Net Neutrality, then Search Neutrality, then Cloud Neutrality, then XYZ Neutrality... how about just everyone not be scumbags and we wouldn't need all of these regulations. What ever happened to playing fair? I hear people complain all the time that government has too many regulations, but it looks like business practically begs the government to enact them.

"Should something like net neutrality prevail, the conflict would likely move to a different level," writes one of the leading US academics on Internet growth and economics. "That level might become search neutrality."odlyzko.jpg

Or, as cloud computing takes off, one company (again, this might well be Google) could so completely dominate the market that it becomes another choke point. We might then need to consider "cloud neutrality."

And the US Government has dealt with this situation O so well in the past. Baby Bells, Microsoft.

Originally posted by fowl:I was thinking, what if Google started charging ISP's to carry "it's content".

What are they going to do? __not__ carry Google? Would you subscribe to slightly cheaper internet that didn't have youtube?

Case in point: ESPN360. I believe most of the major ISPs now "subscribe" to this service and pay a fee to ESPN, but not even a few months ago, Comcast did not..and many of their subscribers were up in arms about not being able to access this feature on their computer.

It will be interesting to see how this affects future services similar to these.

"Granted, Congress can be counted on to make bad laws even on the rare occasions when the intention is good. However, there is no reason in principle that a NN law could not be clear and definite, avoiding the need for a lot of court cases."

Of course there is a reason it could not be clear and definite. Net neutrality is a way to regulate the previously largely unregulated Internet. Governments love regulation. It gives it a reason for being, and it gives it power.

Again, people who support "net neutrality" are supporting whatever it is they think net neutrality is. Until the law is passed, you don't know what that phrase *actually means*. Supporting a vague term like "net neutrality" because you're pissed off at AT&T is foolishness.

I feel, as many others seem to, that there is a misunderstanding of what monopolies are and what their effects are. I'm certainly no apologist for Google, and they may in fact turn out to be evil scumbags who deserve eternal flogging, but there really are other options. People may be too stupid to know that there are, but there are other options.

I really don't have many options with my ISP. Unlike my parents, I am lucky. I have a cable modem and DSL service available. When one sucks too bad for me, I can switch and experience the suckiness of the other for a while. Since I am a programmer, I depend on the internet. Yes, I could live without internet, but I would probably need to take up a new profession if that were so. I could also live without electricity. Yet, for some reason people think that they need it!

But saying that Google has a stranglehold on search is like saying the iPod has a stranglehold on mp3 sales. It may be true but why does it matter? My brother decided not to buy an iPod, and instead bought a Creative Zen. He used it for a while, used an iPod, and proceeded to buy an iPod. Apple didn't sneak into his house with guns and make him do that. In fact, the ONLY reason he switched was because he thought the device itself was better. Should we regulate Apple for making a device that is too good because they might start using that as a way to spy on me?

In all seriousness, I'm not sure about the ethical or market ramifications resulting from Google "bribes". But I do feel very strongly that the situation is a lot different from the net neutrality debate. The primary difference being that I have choice. In fact, I may just use Bing all day today just because I can!

There are two fundamental differences between Google as a gatekeeper and AT&T as a gatekeeper.

1) The telcos enjoy a massive barrier to entry facing anyone who wishes to enter the market and compete with them. It is all but inconceivable for some startup to compete with AT&T for national backbone provisioning. On the other hand, it is entirely feasible for me to start a search engine from my basement. Of course, I face challenges of data storage and marketing, but these are far more tractable problems than laying thousands of miles of fibre.

2) The switching cost for end users ranges from "high" to "infinite" (for people who only have one broadband provider available) in the telco market. The switching cost for end users in the search engine market is practically zero. The most important implication of which is that there is no problem switching back and forth. If Google makes it difficult to find certain types of information, but another provider specializes in searching that information well, the interested user can simply go to the alternative site for those queries better answered there.

This isn't to say that Google doesn't bear watching; their market dominance does give them a lot of influence over who gets to be easily visible on the internet. But it's simply not the same level of control as could be exerted by telcos.

Sixty percent of the principles of Net-Neutrality, mostly concerning conflict of interest of the ISP against competing web services, are great. No one will argue against these points and most of them were recently enacted into FCC policy. Those pushing NN the hardest are doing so to stop QOS and bandwidth throttling by application. Why can't we take NN as far as we have and then heavily regulate the WOS and throttling? Again, we can monitor, why ban it outright?

We ban outright because ISPs are not the ones we want picking winners and losers here. If someone comes up with a brilliant way of doing free VoIP conference calls but the ISPs' DPI equipment decides it looks like P2P and gets deprioritized then it can never become popular because the ISPs made it useless. And if it never becomes popular then there is no incentive for the ISPs to fix their DPI filters, so it remains useless forever.

It's much better to say that the first X bps that each user sends is guaranteed (where X goes up when you pay more per month) and the rest is best-effort. That way if the user wants to prioritize VoIP or whatever else, he does it himself using a piece of software on his PC or gateway.

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"Public ownership" is just a euphemism for state ownership. The public doesn't actually own anything- they can't sell their share of a national park.

OK, let's forget about "public ownership" and instead have "customer ownership" with government support: Government floats a bond to pay for the build out. To get in you have to sign a five year contract to make fixed monthly payments, which payments go in part to pay off the bonds. At the end of the five years the customers own the network. You can sell your share if you like, but only to the other customers.

This is a FUD piece. Comparing a search engine that could have it's entire user base literally switch away tomorrow (not likely but POSSIBLE) to massive PHYSICAL infrastructure where many users *don't have a choice* is completely insane. That said, why aren't they talking about "regulating" Microsoft? They have a 92% share of the OS market and that's a lot more than Google's search share.

Case in point: ESPN360. I believe most of the major ISPs now "subscribe" to this service and pay a fee to ESPN, but not even a few months ago, Comcast did not..and many of their subscribers were up in arms about not being able to access this feature on their computer.